Cutting to the heart of a deadly rivalry

Magnificent: Mary Stuart

By Dominic Cavendish

12:01AM BST 22 Jul 2005

Dominic Cavendish reviews Mary Stuart at Donmar Warehouse

The astonishing thing about Friedrich von Schiller's Mary Stuart (1800) is how a play so riddled with historical falsehoods can feel so painstakingly true in performance. The work's academic misdemeanours are legion, the most glaring example being the decisive encounter, in Act 3, between Mary, "Queen of Scots", and her cousin - and effective captor - Elizabeth I in the grounds of Fotheringhay Castle (the pair never met).

Of course, we're thoroughly used to playwrights playing fast and loose with history; what's good enough for Shakespeare is good enough for Schiller, so the argument must go. Yet all the same, we're right to approach his audacious dramatic invention with a degree of protective scepticism: how can we get closer to an understanding of the behind-the-scenes machinations that upheld the Tudor dynasty, such a vital part of our national story, and form any judgment about the personalities involved at the time of Mary's death in 1587, when so much depends here on poetic licence?

The answer, as made resoundingly clear in Phyllida Lloyd's magnificent new revival, is to recognise that Schiller's figments of fancy are underpinned by a sure grasp of deep-running political processes. While he might appear to be adding, what he's actually doing is cutting to the bitter heart of the matter. Mary and Elizabeth are bound together, for all their differences in temperament, religion and situation, in the same tragic equation, both answerable to the needs of the state. Rivals for the same crown, one must die if the other is to live - and nothing can alter this deadly dynamic.

Lloyd, using a fleet-footed new translation by Peter Oswald, brilliantly reinforces the stark dualism of Schiller's scheme. Her gripping production, which exudes a sense of hurtling urgency and all-pervading danger, presents the women in period costume, with the male courtiers in modern grey suits. Not only does this make Janet McTeer's Mary and Harriet Walter's Elizabeth correspondingly isolated figures in a world of masculine politicking, it underlines how trapped both are in the roles fate has assigned them.

There's almost nothing to look at in terms of décor - the Donmar's rear brick wall, blackened for the occasion, with a wooden bench running along the base of it, is the principal feature of Anthony Ward's set. This, together with rapier-precision lighting effects from Hugh Vanstone, concentrates the mind powerfully on performances that are flawlessly assured right across the board.

Walter gives a masterclass in the art of acting from the neck up. Imperiously rigged out in a black and gold dress and white ruff, she delivers many of Elizabeth's early lines with a cruel smile playing on her thin lips, the very picture of disdain. But the eyes, watchful, nervous and finally anguished, tell a different story. Openly at a loss as to what to do with her cousin, Elizabeth ends up tangibly, wretchedly lost herself.

Blonde and earthy by contrast, McTeer supplies a matchingly subtle and commanding performance, rising through degrees of feistiness to an almost demented pitch of vengeful ire during Act 3 before arriving at a dignified, almost saintly air of self-possession come the climax.

There's outstanding work, too, from Guy Henry as the pair's double-dealing confidant Dudley, from Rory Kinnear as the impetuously devoted Mortimer, a sort of Catholic fundamentalist fanatic, and from David Horovitch as Lord Burleigh, the most coldly clinical strategist in the unsavoury Westminster pack.

This is the second major Schiller revival London has seen this year, the Donmar's artistic director Michael Grandage having already steered Don Carlos into the West End from Sheffield. It looks as if he's got another unlikely Teutonic triumph on his hands.